Campanile Tower Looks New Again--Thanks To Moose Legion!

The newly refurbished tower--before its four clocks were synchronized!

> When Shawn Baile first came to the Mooseheart campus, the first building he saw was the Campanile. He didn’t necessarily like what he saw. The paint was peeling, and the building that was the campus’s visual signature, prior to the 1950 construction of the House of God, was in need of repair in several aeras.

Thanks to a $150,000 project by the Moose Legion, with Baile as Director, no one entering the gates of the Child City will have that impression again. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” Baile said. “Now when you come through the gate and see the Campanile, I think the impression you’ll get is much more favorable than I got in September of 2004.”

The repair work was isolated in the tower of the structure, which was constructed in 1922 and is one of the oldest buildings on campus.

There is now a flag pole on a reconstructed roof. The cupola has been repainted. The windows were removed, cleaned and replaced. The stairs in the tower have rubberized traction pads and the interior of the tower has been replastered and repainted.

All four clocks in the structure have been replaced. And the tower is now lighted at night.

“The Campanile, when it was first built, was a kind of beacon of hope,” Mooseheart Executive Director Scott Hart said. “That was the building the kids saw when they first came on campus. “With the support of the Moose Legion, that is what the Campanile is back to. If you drive on campus, especially at night when it’s lit up, it really is kind of inspiring. It gives the message that Mooseheart can be a beacon of hope for kids in trouble.”

The project was presented to the Moose Legion at the 2005 International Convention--and the Moose Legion presented the funds in ’06. Work has been ongoing since. The clocks were replaced this summer.

Mooseheart’s Campanile (an Italian word for “belltower”) has been a campus focal point since its dedication on Aug. 23, 1922. The Campanile stands on the spot of the original cement silo from the farm on which Mooseheart was built. For the 85 years since, class pictures, speeches and weddings have taken place by the bronze James J. Davis statue on the building’s rotunda.

The statue, of Davis with a boy on on side and a girl on the other, was created to show “the loving care with which the Order surrounds its children of the departed,” wrote architect Carl Berger in the February 1922 issue of Moose Magazine. Eighty-five years later, the Campanile restoration is “another example of the Moose Legion taking on a project and completing it,” Baile said. “It’s one simple thing. I don’t know if it looks as good as the day it was built, but we’re certainly proud of the way it looks now.”

Moose Legion Inaugurates New Service Award

> One of the exciting things to come from the “Morning with the Moose Legion” session at this year’s International Convention was the introduction of a Moose Legion Fraternal Service Award.

The award program was created in order to recognize the entire Board of Directors of a particular Legion unit for their achievements in the previous year.

“The award program we had previously only recognized the President and the Secretary,” Moose Legion Director Shawn Baile said. “We felt there was a need to have something where the criteria was easy to understand and it was simple to track. The units have goals, and it’s straightforward whether they make them or don’t.”

Baile said the new award also ensures a real team effort goes into earning the honor.

“It’s one more step to add some recognition of the achievements of these units,” Baile said. “We always tell people that Moose Legionnaires are the workers, the go-getters and doers in the fraternity.

“For a time, we took them them for granted. It’s time we properly recognized them for what they do for our fraternity.”

Criteria to be met in order to earn the award include:

• Show an increase in active memberswhip over prior fiscal year.
  
  
• Show an increase in Endowment Fund donations over prior fiscal year.
  
  
• File Annual Board of Directors Report by May 10.
  
  
• Submit Moose Legionnaire of the Year nominee for the jurisdiction by September 1.
  
  
• Achieve 100% of assigned commitment to annual Moose Legion project by April 30.

The deadlines for the final three criteria have passed for 2007-08.

The first Moose Legion Fraternal Service Award will be presented at the 2008 International Convention in Las Vegas.